The Watcher
by wintergreen825
Summary: Death stalks Harry, but it's okay. They're family. (Rated for repeated character death)


**Legal Disclaimer:** I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.

**Warning:** This work may be offensive to some readers. Additionally, there's a repeated major character death (as a theme) as well as internalized emotional abuse of a child (Harry's been told that he's a stupid freak enough that he calls himself that). Feel free to back out if that's you.

**Author's Note:** So I adore MoD Harry fics. I doubly enjoy MoD Harry fics where Dumbledore was wrong about what caused one to become a Master of Death. Which is how you have now have a tiny Harry being stalked by Death. (Also, as always, my Potters are Desi.)

**Submitting Info:  
****Stacked with:** Hogwarts (Term 11); MC4A (SuBingo; FPC; BAON; SIN; Star; Fence; ER; AV; T3; SN; O3)  
**Individual Challenges:** Gryffindor MC; Death's Inevitable Master (Y); Sett to Destroy; Brush (Y); Seeds; Claimed; Ways to the Heart; Tissue Warning (Y); Golden Times; Interesting Times; Old Shoes; Themes & Things A [Death]; Themes & Things B [Protection]; Feeling So Logical [Miracle]; Ethnic & Present; Neurodivergent; Tiny Terror; Quiet Time; Rian-Russo Inversion; Flags & Ribbons (Y); Letter of the Day; Short Jog; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux; Two Cakes!  
**House:** Hufflepuff  
**Assignment No.:** Term 11 – Assignment 01  
**Subject (Task No.):** Photography (Task #2: Write about someone being, or believing that they are being spied on.)  
**Other Hogwarts Challenges:** Insane Prompt Challenge [165] (Death); 365 [62] (Master); Scavenger Hunt [59] (Poem as inspiration)  
**Space Address (Prompt): **5B (Sickle/Scythe)**  
Representation(s):** Autistic Harry Potter; Master of Death Harry Potter; Death  
**Bonus Challenges: **Lovely Coconuts; Creature Feature; Wind Beneath; Second Verse (Ladylike; Not a Lamp; Persistence Still; White Dress; Nontraditional; Sneeze Weasel; Nightingale; Unwanted Advice); Chorus (Pear-Shaped; Wabi Sabi; Machismo; Peddling Pots; Rediscovery; Mouth of Babes; Tomorrow's Shade; Eternal Boredom; Larger than Life)  
**Tertiary Bonus Challenges:** T3 (Toad); SN (Rail; Spare); O3 (Orator; Oath)  
**Word Count:** 1699

(^^)  
**The Watcher  
**(^^)

The first time that Harry could remember dying was when he was five. Dudley had pushed him from the top of the slide on the playground attached to the church that the Dursleys belonged to. Previously, Harry had been smart enough to avoid any version of playing on any of the equipment. That had been more a natural extension of Aunt Petunia's rule about Harry not being on any of the furniture than any dislike of the play equipment. If he played on it, Dudley was sure to tell Aunt Petunia, and while she had never _said_ that he wasn't allowed, by that point in his young life, Harry already knew to not expect ignorance of any rules to be an excuse for breaking them.

Dudley had lured Harry over to the slide with promises of how fun it was. Harry was dumb enough to have believed that maybe Dudley actually wanted to play and that the gleam in his eyes was something harmless, no matter how much it reminded him of how Ripper looked before trying to take his arm off. Harry had been about to push off when he had felt Dudley's hands on his arms, yanking him sideways over the tiny railing.

The air had been cool as it rushed by his face as he hurled towards the ground. It stung his eyes. Then the ground had been there. There had been a bunch of wet snaps, one right behind his ears. His breath had left him completely from the impact and no matter how he gasped, he couldn't seem to recover it. Weakly, Harry had turned his head and seen a dark figure near the fence that separated the playground from the graveyard behind the church.

Then everything went completely black until Harry woke up in the A&E several hours later. Harry would have asked about the figure, but questions always made Aunt Petunia mad and she was already upset about being forced to take Harry to the hospital in the first place. He still had the feeling that the figure, whoever it had been, had been there for him.

Which was stupid, because no one cared about Harry unless it was whether he had done his chores or not. That was just a fact of life, like the fact that he was a freak or that he was brown skinned while everyone except the Tysons were the same color as the Dursleys. So it was stupid to think that anyone was watching him in particular.

It was just a stupid thought from a stupid freak.

(^^)

Harry hated going on shopping trips to London with Aunt Petunia. It wasn't because he was only ever brought along to carry things or because she couldn't leave him with the spinster who lived a few blocks over and always smelled of cabbages and bitter almonds. He actually didn't mind that part, really. It was the strange people who always seemed to show up on those trips.

They were creepy, if Harry was to be honest. They would always pop up out of alleys and abandoned businesses. They would always smell weird like animals or plants mixed with the smell of lightning. They would always be dressed oddly, though no one else seemed to notice if they were wearing old-fashioned clothes or clothes that really shouldn't be worn in the situation, like fishing wellies in the middle of London or a nightgown. And they would always, without fail, insist on touching him and greeting him like they were old friends even if Harry had never met them.

He both loved and hated that part. They would crowd close to him and shake his hand like he was important. Sometimes, especially if it was a woman, the strangers would hug him. It would be so tight and unexpected that Harry couldn't remember his name, let alone how to breathe. He always wanted to lean into those hugs, but every time, he could feel Aunt Petunia's gaze burning against his back as she watched and he _knew_ that if he did, even the tiniest bit, then he would get in trouble when they got back to Privet Drive. So he could only stand there as stiffly as possible, trying not to drop whatever bags or parcels he was carrying, and endure the strangeness that was hugs.

The strangeness that came with any time he was touched was probably why he didn't think anything of the tingling on his wrist after a particular lingering handshake. He was only seven, but he could recognize that the wavy lines in his vision and dizziness were not good things, especially with how quickly they were getting stronger. He managed to follow behind Aunt Petunia for a few blocks before he began struggling to keep up with her anger-quickened pace. Someone bumped him, and the force was minor but enough that he stumbled into the alcove made by a stairwell to the flats over one of the shops they were passing.

He didn't sit down so much as controlled his collapse onto the second step. He was having trouble focusing now. What few bites of food he had managed to steal while cooking the Dursleys' breakfast that morning threatened to escape all over the pavement between his trainers. Weakly, he moved the bags he had been carrying out of the way, just in case. Aunt Petunia would not appreciate it if he was sick all over her purchases.

Harry startled as a small hand carded its way through his unruly hair. He tried to focus on the person, but his eyes didn't want to cooperate. All he could see was a pale figure dressed in all black with something equally black on their head. He could smell the person, though. The scent of mums and damp leaves with just a hint of freshly overturned earth was surprisingly comforting, especially as the hand continued to run through his hair. He listed towards the person as the dizziness began to overwhelm him entirely. The leather jacket the person was wearing despite the heat of summer felt cool against his damp forehead.

"You certainly attract trouble, don't ya?" she asked before shifting him to lean against the wall of the stairwell. "Don't worry, little master. I'll make them pay for this attempt. First, I just have to make sure that someone other than the horse-faced lemon-sucker finds ya."

She must have left him then, but he had already fallen into the darkness.

When Harry woke up, he was again in a hospital bed. A woman in scrubs scowled at him as she adjusted his IV bag. Instinctively, he hunched down, trying to look as meek as possible. That sometimes worked when Uncle Vernon was in a rage and looking for a target. It never worked with Aunt Petunia, though, and it just made the nurse scowl more at him. Harry wasn't even certain what he had done wrong other than get sick.

"Someone out there is watching over you, sweetie," she said before slipping him a wrapped bonbon that was a deep reddish purple. She patted his arm before leaving.

Which was good, because it was on the tip of his tongue to say that someone had been watching him for years, even if he was just a stupid freak who was kind of useless no matter what he tried.

(^^)

Harry got used to seeing the person watching him. Sometimes, he had the thought that she was always there, watching him from a place that kept her in the corner of his eye where he could never quite see her. Something prevented her from coming into the Dursleys' house, despite how he could almost sense her pacing the sidewalk at the edge of the front garden. Other times, he had the insight to know that he had to be imagining her, that she was just the product of too many knocks to the head from Aunt Petunia's frying pan.

Like anything that wasn't normal, Harry ignored his maybe-real-but-probably-not watcher. Things were better that way; even as stupid as he was, he knew that.

(^^)

Harry saw her at Hogwarts even more frequently than he ever had at the Dursleys. She was there when he fell down three floors because the stairs moved unexpectedly while he was too close to the edge. She was there in the stands during every time he was practicing Quidditch with the team. She was there, smirking like a satisfied cat, when he jumped on a troll's back only to become trapped underneath it when his wand unexpectedly went off while up the thing's nose.

He saw her over Professor Quirrell's shoulder as he realized that his touch burned the other man. Her eyes were burning with green-tinged anger as she reached out to grab the other face that the professor had, the one that had claimed to be Voldemort. Even as his eyes crossed from the effort it took to keep hold of the man, Harry noted that she looked a lot like how his mother had in the Mirror of Erised before Dumledore had taken it away.

"Are you my mother?" he asked after Quirrell had stopped struggling and they had pushed him aside. The woman was running her hand through his hair again, calmer now. He closed his eyes, too exhausted to keep them open when it felt like a part of him had burnt just like Quirrell had.

"No, little master," she said, "but I did know her. Just like I knew your father, and his father before him, and so far back to the first of your line to step foot on these shores. That one had two brothers, who sought to control what was never meant to be theirs, but the one who begot you? He was a friend."

"Am I a friend?" Harry asked as the darkness began to pull him underneath its thick waters.

"No, little master," she answered. Her voice sounded so far away. She was close enough that he could smell her graveyard scent again, but he was fading too fast to lift his hand to touch her. "You're more than a friend. You're _family_."


End file.
